by E D Ebeling
“I can’t think,” he said, “I can’t think––” He looked up at her. “It was obvious, wasn’t it? So obvious.” He shook his head, and his hands gripped the chair as though it were the last real thing in the world. “Leave,” he said. “Why should you stay?” His eyes moved to the wall behind her. “Get out.” When she still hadn’t moved, he got to his feet and shouted, “Get out. Get out!”
She pushed through the crowd at the door and walked straight ahead, boots thumping over the stones. She left through the main entrance.
The wind knocked the rain against her, and cooled her hot face. Gryka padded after her.
Sixteen
As Sarid walked, her habitual calm couldn’t be pounded into her head, nor her shaking hands fisted into stillness, nor her eyes blinked into dryness. She stopped when she reached the woods. She stared up into the branches of a pine, and to her shame and the amusement of a small, detached part of her, began beating her fists on the trunk and sobbing.
Damned if she should try harder. Damned if she shouldn’t let them all die. “Idiots,” she yelled. “Idiots!”
Hands scraped and arms exhausted, she sat against the tree and closed her eyes.
***
When she woke it was dark. Gryka was curled into a tight ball at her side. A woman stood before her.
Sarid jumped to her feet, thinking it was Yelse. The woman laughed. Her breath was spicy and her silver-green hair shook behind her like a spray of white pine. She was naked, skin wrinkled and gathered into knobs at her elbows and breasts. A mavka.
Warm heart half-hair. She smiled.
“Go away,” said Sarid.
Go away. You are leaning against our trunk. Sarid wondered that the thing could look so beautiful and so hideous at the same time.
“Why must you look like that?” Sarid wiped frost off her lashes.
To your hound we look like wolves.
Gryka was up, growling, hackles raised.
The mavka ripped a fistful of fur from Gryka’s back, and the dog yelped and sprang away. The other one didn’t make a noise.
“What other one?”
Asleep under the hanging stone.
And Sarid saw it. Snagged on the mavka’s jutting collarbone. A lock of dark hair.
The rain had turned to a sparse snow. Though Sarid couldn’t feel the cold, the night must be freezing. “Where? What hanging stone?”
Give us your dog and we’ll tell you.
Sarid had no time for this sort of thing. She raised her hands and blew at the saebel; and the girl’s long toes grasped a rock and she bent almost to the ground. “Tell me or I’ll split you in half.”
The stone by the apple tree, she keened. Where red fox kept her kits. Before we ate them.
“Stop eating kits.” Sarid stopped the wind and called her dog to her.
They ran, she and Gryka, over a stone bridge and through a hazel thicket, all the way to an apple tree Sarid knew was under a cliff. She didn’t have to look very hard. Savvel was beneath an overhang, dressed only in a shirt and breeches, and, for some reason, a belt and baldric, as though he’d forgotten he hadn’t got on a coat.
He was white as the snow. She took her foot out of its boot and put it on him. She thought of sun and fire, and the snow melted in a circle around them. He opened his eyes and looked at her foot.
“Trying to go the same way as your mother?” She put her foot back in the boot. “How’d you get out here?”
He blinked at her. “The tunnel.”
It’d been a stupid question.
“Well, go back.”
“Come with me,” he said. “I’ll explain––you hadn’t meant to––” He sat up and breathed into his hands, and squeezed them between his knees. “I’m the biggest, most monstrous idiot. Bigger even than my brother. Come back with me.”
“No,” she said. “He’s as crazy as you are.”
He rose to his knees. “If I said I was sorry you still wouldn’t come back?”
“No.”
He sat down again. “I can’t go back either, then.”
She wanted to kick him. “I can make you go back.”
He bit his lip––it was almost a smug expression. “You can’t go abandoning your monster.” He put his hands under his chin and shivered.
Sarid sat down. She started crying, and Gryka squeezed between them, snuffling around Savvel’s head. Savvel felt his hair; his fingers came away with blood.
“Ah, hell,” he said. “All I do is hurt myself.”
“It was a saebel.”
His trembling turned violent. “Keep me warm. Yoffin’s not here.”
***
They weren’t tired, and Savvel needed to move, so they got up and began to walk. They walked towards giant trees and towers of rock and the sound of water, because people generally need something to walk toward; but neither of them thought about where they were going, and Gryka wandered around them in giant circles.
After a couple hours the sky lightened, and they heard a roar and a wet gush. They pushed through a thicket––lush and mossy after the dry pines––and found a little waterfall. It poured over a net of ferns into a pool.
The ferns had a silver look, like sage, and Savvel pulled a frond. He rubbed it between his fingers. The scent made Sarid drowsy, and she smiled.
“I know these.” She picked one. “The saebelen call them something like––” she moved her lips, trying out sounds. “Paegendre.”
“Vyendriy? The flowering fern? Thought they were a myth.”
“They are. Ferns don’t flower.” She put the frond in her mouth and chewed it. “Tastes like comfort.”
Savvel did likewise, and his eyelids lowered. His grin was sloppy. “Like good Noreme whiskey.”
He picked another frond, and Sarid took his wrist. “No more. You’ll fall asleep and never wake up.”
“Better than whiskey, then.”
Savvel dropped the frond and stared at the waterfall. He waded into the little pool, giving no thought to his boots, and put his hand through the water. The sheet foamed around his hand––the wrong side of it. “The water’s falling up.”
Something moved behind the water. “Not so close,” said Sarid.
“Why?” And then the water leapt and closed over his head. His hair ran up with the current and blood tinged the water darker. Sarid splashed over, grabbed him around the waist, and wrenched him back.
He took a gasping breath and shook out his hair. Blood feathered over his wet face. “What in hell––” He took rocks, dirt and leaves from the bank and threw them into the water. He kicked loam and logs into the pool, and Gryka ran around him barking; and before Sarid understood what he was doing, the resident rusalka came to the surface.
Her hair swirled around her face, green like the ferns, and her mouth made a whirlpool. It chokes, it chokes!
“It chokes, does it?” Savvel dropped a big, flat rock onto the creature’s head. “My goodness me.”
“You’re not going to kill her.” Sarid pulled him back by his baldric. “Like trying to crush water with a rock.”
The saebel rose out of her soiled pool and put her arms over a stone; her fingers ran over it in rivulets. She was made all of water, except for her ferny hair. He is a bad man, she gurgled, a bad man.
“And I would find you a lot prettier if you didn’t suck on heads,” said Savvel.
Sarid wiped spray off her face. “You understand her,” she said.
He wrung out his shirt. “Passion erases language barriers.” His face was red with blood, and he touched his hair. “I ought to cut this.”
“I think it’s because you’re mad.”
“Me?” He grabbed Gryka by the scruff as she ran past.
A bad man. Another rusalka had risen from the pool. Her green eyes glowed in the early sun. They fight in our mouths like eels, like bitten tongues. Thieves are nice. Murderers are very nice.
“This one’s neither,” said Sarid. “Leave him alone.”
/> “I thieve joy and murder hope.” Savvel took a step towards the second rusalka. He plunged a hand into her stomach. She squealed and bit him with fish-bone teeth, and his blood turned her cheeks rosy.
Savvel snatched his hand back. “Ghastly things.” Another river daughter came to the surface, watercress spilling over her sparkling shoulders.
Aleksei’s daughter, she said. Aleksei wants you to come into his hall. We’ll take you.
“What’s your name?” said Sarid.
Ganadene, she said.
Ganadene, said the second.
Ganadene, said the third.
Come inside us, said watercress Ganadene, and the three rusalki started singing. They sank into the water, and their mouths made three whirlpools that melted together into a maelstrom almost too big for the little pool. Sarid wondered if she should subject Savvel to her father. But she didn’t know what else to do with him, and taking a deep breath, she grabbed Savvel by the arm and her hound by the scruff, and stepped inside the maelstrom.
***
The water pushed them through the earth, past brockholes and buried treasure and the foundations of old ruins, and at last swept them up a hillside. The wave receded, leaving them on their backs and gasping.
The rusalki laughed. Sarid turned her head, blinking mud out of her eyes. They ran with splashing feet and dove into the ground.
She breathed deeply, looking up at the sky. The wild, white head of Aleksei blotted it out.
“Sarid.” Her father beamed at her. She twisted herself onto her stomach. No snow covered the ground here: the grass was green and full of tiny purple flowers. Savvel lay beside her, moaning. Gryka leapt up and ran around the grass in terrified circles. “You’ve brought a consort.”
“A prince, actually.” Sarid pulled Savvel into a sitting position and patted his cheeks.
Savvel blinked blearily. “A warning would’ve been”––he spat mud from his mouth––“completely inadequate.”
“A princely consort.” Aleksei pried open one of Savvel’s eyes. “How sad the noble eyes.”
“Noble as a rock,” said Sarid.
She climbed to her feet, pulled Savvel after, and looked around. A willow stood just above them: big, overgrown, a mane of yellow on the hill. Between the roots was a round, green door, standing open. A warmth exuded from it, welcoming, comforting. Sarid resolved to go no nearer it.
“Porphyry, then. Come in, come in.” Aleksei walked toward the door, and beckoned them after. “Talk is more interesting over food.”
“We won’t be eating anything,” said Sarid. “In fact, we oughtn’t––” But Savvel was following Aleksei through the door, and Sarid shouted, clenched her fists, and ran after them.
The sun spilled in a few feet, illuminating thick columns. They walked past them down a long, twisting stair. Sarid saw the cold glint of gold and gems. She rubbed her eyes, and her sight became clear as still water.
The stone columns had become slender trees. Jeweled fruit winked in the leaves, and birds spread bright wings and sang songs familiar and comforting. The sky was a twilit blue, and the ground glowed with golden light.
“Is this Veles’ kingdom?” said Savvel.
“No,” said Aleksei. “Veles doesn’t like me much. He and my grandmother had a falling out.”
The path was laid with mossy stones, and Sarid stepped out of her boots. The fragrant moss gave way pleasantly under her feet. Pools welled like shimmering mist under the trees, and white koi jumped out and swam in patterns through the air. Lilies bloomed orange flames on either side of the path, and dragonflies hummed, and ruby snakes slipped in and out of intricate knots. Trees shrouded the distant hills and colored them green, blue, and purple.
Gryka was ill at ease. She should have been running after the snakes, and snapping at the dragonflies. But she kept at Sarid’s side, flinching when they flew too near.
She was the only one. Savvel was singing, and her father too, and Sarid laughed, because it all seemed perfectly natural––here was a place where she could stretch out with her power and harm nothing.
They came to a tower woven from four fir trees big as mountains. They stopped just outside it, and sat down on a lawn of golden grass that crumpled under them like velvet.
Ganadene and her two sisters rose from a nearby pool, and served them breakfast. Pearl carp from spring understone, said watercress Ganadene. She put a silver platter on the grass between them.
The fish on the platter were so beautiful it seemed a shame to eat them. Aleksei slit through the skin with a finger, and the flesh fell out in flakes, sunset-peach. He gave a fish to Savvel and one to Sarid.
The flesh melted on her tongue like snow. She shuddered with delight.
“Tastes like a winter morning,” said Savvel.
Feels like a winter evening, said one of the Ganadenes. Her fingers trickled under Savvel’s shirt. He pushed her away.
“Nothing wetter than a river daughter.” Aleksei jumped up and chased the Ganadenes into a wood just below the sward. Sarid looked down and peeled scales off her fish.
“Your father’s completely crazy,” said Savvel, looking after him.
“So are you.” Savvel started and looked up. Aleksei was standing over him as though he’d never left, velvet jacket soaked through. “With a shadow ghastly as a bad tooth.”
“I’m cursed.” Savvel shrugged and snapped something, a fishbone, between his teeth.
“It was an accident,“ Sarid said.
“Cursed?” said Aleksei.
Savvel nodded, and Aleksei grabbed Savvel’s ears and peered at the back of his head as though looking through a spyglass.
“I see no curse. Your mind’s been opened. No locks, screens, or filters.”
“Opened?” said Savvel. “Like a door? Fancy that. Why do only the terrors and nightmares know about it, then, to come in?”
“Oh, them,” Aleksei said, and laughed. “Why make room for them? Why make the world black and bitter? It all boils down”––he put another fish on Savvel’s plate––“to preference. One day you can be convinced the moon will crash down and cover the earth in cheese. Another day that everything’s going splendid. Who’s to say which day’s the madder? In fact, I’m convinced,” he said, crouching between them, “I’m convinced every conviction is a kind of madness.”
“You’re eating your own foot, Father.” Sarid took a fish by the tail and threw it to Gryka.
“There’s a whole spectrum,” said Aleksei. “Pick the madness you like best, I say.”
Sarid shook her head, and then stopped eating. She wondered why she’d never bothered to tell her father about Savvel.
“You do have some control over it,” she said to Savvel. “Back when you ripped my dress you made it so I had no power.”
“I ripped your dress?”
“Don’t act like you’ve forgotten.”
“I didn’t do that,” said Savvel.
“You did, though.”
He scowled and poked at his fish head.
“Everyone’s got some demon in them,” said Sarid.
“Didn’t like the look of that one.”
“It would really be something if you learned how to control your madness.”
“You––” He frowned at his fish. “You really think I could?”
Aleksei was humming, knotting together a chain of golden flowers. Savvel started laughing.
“Rischa gave you a puppy and your sister a county,” he said. “Doesn’t that make you angry?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?” said Sarid. And remembering Gryka as a long-boned puppy, she looked up and around for her.
She was crouched at the base of a tree, legs splayed, body heaving.
“What’s the matter?” said Sarid, rising. “Have you choked on a fishbone?” The dog looked at her with sad eyes, and went back to hacking.
Sarid became frightened. Her heart drummed. She took a step and stopped.
Instead of grass th
ere was stone under her feet. Damp, muddy stone. The light went dim and watery, and she looked above her and saw stalagmites. Freezing water dripped into her eyes. She smelled something fetid, cold, like the stink of a drowned corpse.
She turned round. Her father and Savvel were sitting in mud. Her eyes wandered against her will to the platter. It was tarnished to a dull black. Upon it, sneering in death, were the rotting carcasses of three fish.
She turned and staggered to the nearest hole, into which she proceeded to vomit for a good long while.
When she was done she held her aching stomach. “Savvel,” she said, “we must go, we––”
“My dear,” said her father, who’d come up behind her, “you’re upset.” He put his hands on her shoulders. She stood up straight and wondered why her stomach was aching and her throat burning.
“No.” She peered into the pool. “I’m weeping because I look so beautiful.” Her reflection rippled in the breeze. She was wearing a gown sewn with rubies and the winking golden eyes of humans, and on her head was an albatross beating its great, white wings. Her teeth were sharpened to handsome points, and her eyes were a dangerous, glittering jet. She was Queen Under Stone.
She walked regally back to the spread and continued eating her fish.
Seventeen
Time passed in a muted blur.
Sarid remembered winter solstice: firelight on the snow; red and white roses growing from the fir trees; Savvel in a white and black checked robe, dancing with a headless white hart.
At midnight Savvel sang. The bonfire blazed behind him, flames curling like the plumes of a giant gold bird. “It’s a Yule song,” he said, and the dark trees leaned in to listen.
“The pines at dusk all hang their heads,
Bowed beneath a cracking fear,
Cores all frozen gainst the breath
Of the vengeful dying year.
Tell them that their sap is running,
Wake them so their boughs might shake.
Knock them from their cowardly sleep